Strengthening citizens’ stakes in Pakistan’s democracy
through participatory election observation and analysis
Introduction
Periodic elections are the backbone of representative democracy. However, recent experiences show elections could easily be manipulated by powerful and wealthy politicians. Despite massive funding programmes for improvement of election processes, the quality of representative democracy has deteriorated in most parts of the world including Pakistan.
Major factors of this deterioration are socio-economic inequalities, weakening of organic civil society such as trade unions and social movements.
Due to certain political and financial limitations, election observation across the globe appears to have a skewed bias in favour of observing just the fairness (availability of level playing field to all) while measuring freeness (free will of voters) of elections has often been ignored. We have resolved to focus more on ‘freeness’ of elections. Keeping that in view, PATTAN, - the largest and a self-reliant platform of civil society organisations, labour unions, women groups, academics and individuals in Pakistan - aim to enable voters to record their experiences as voters and to measure freedom of voters through participatory tools in the forthcoming general elections.
PATTAN Development Organisation is one of the pioneering organisations of Pakistan on elections, governance monitoring and accountability, human rights including rights of women and labourers. It emerged in the aftermath of 1992 super floods and since then it has been working with disaster-prone communities on public policy issues relating to disaster risk reduction.
Since 1997 PATTAN has been observing and analysing the elections in Pakistan. PATTAN has played a leading role in the formation and development of large networks including Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN), Asian Disaster Risk Reduction Network (ADRRN), National Humanitarian Network (NHN), Women Councillors Network (WCN) and Labour Quomi Movement etc.
Coalition38 is named after Article 38 of the Pakistan’s Constitution which guarantees social justice by not allowing concentration of wealth and means of production in few hands. We are trying to extend its membership across all sections of the population. Currently, we have partners and volunteers in more than 100 districts of Pakistan.
We have developed the most innovative, independent, and participatory methodology for the purpose. It stands on two principles, citizen-driven and self-reliance. Its four pillars are managed, financed, documented, and analysed by citizens themselves.
We aim to register two female and two male voters (in total 340,000) as Affiliated Voters (AVs) for each polling station. At each Polling Area AVs will record personal experiences of voting and conduct participatory mapping of free-will of voters in their respective polling areas. Real time results and trends will be shared with everyone through media.
We are happy to announce that we will not appeal to any foreign donor for financial support.
We appeal to Pakistanis residing inside and outside of Pakistan to support this most innovative initiative to improve our democracy through enhanced involvement of citizens in the electoral processes.
How could you participate?
- As donor: by contributing PKR 8,000 per Polling Area (PA). If you reside abroad you could contribute equivalent to USD 25. You can sponsor as many PAs as you wish, but not more than 200: click for transfer of money.
- As Academic: statistician, researcher, writer, supervisor, surveyor, IT specialist, and media specialist: click for details.
- As Affiliated Voter: click for details..
For further information, please contact:
Postal Address:
House 5, Street 58, F10/3, Islamabad, Pakistan